60 percent of U.S. home users have broadband

That’s a jump from 51 percent a year ago. Nielsen/NetRatings says 86 million Internet users surfed the Web on home broadband connections in August.

Broadband use has grown steadily in the United States as prices fall and more video and other bandwidth-intent materials are available online.

“This continuing increase in broadband use is an essential step in a maturing Internet industry,” said Charles Buchwalter, the research firm’s vice president of client analytics. Broadband users tend to spend more time and money online, he said.

Even those who recently said they saw no need for broadband are jumping to it now that prices are coming down.

4 Responses

People are foolish not to get broadband now if it’s available. I won’t mention the names, but a well-known search provider and a famous phone company have teamed up to provide DSL for $14.95/mo. I use it, it works great. Why is anyone still paying for dialup? There is no longer any cost benefit to dialup, even if you use the Internet very infrequently.

I wish someone (Dwight Silverman) or someone at the Chronicle would do the story about Time Warner Cable and their failure during “Hurricane Rita.”

I use the quotes only because in my service area (Galleria area) I did not experience Hurricane Rita, yet Time Warner cable continues to blame Rita for all their troubles.

As an oldster who is not afraid to try new things, I signed up for the VOIP on Time Warner. It failed miserably during the “storm.” Yes, I hesitate to even call what I experienced last Saturday morning a storm. The wind blew. Some limbs came down. The power went out for 20 hours — that I can understand. What I can’t understand is why Time Warner Cable suffered such a loss and could not or would not handle it. My cable TV and VOIP modem didn’t come back into service until Tuesday, yet the VOIP did not work. I had extreme difficulty reaching TWC and had to resort to visiting their lovely office on Bissonnett. Still didn’t do any good. Broadband became intermittent on Wednesday evening after exchanging VOIP modem which took two additional trips to the office. TWC was still blaming Rita on Wednsiday night. Today, they had a new person to blame — ME! Amazing really. I’ve changed nothing since last night but miraculously MY problem cured itself after I cancelled my broadband. HAH! Cable modem works beautifully now. And for all this TWC is going to give us ONE DAY CREDIT! Thanks a lot. As soon as the DSL modem arrives, I’m done with TWC. Thanks to SBC, I had phone service working with a new number after placing my order just 5 hours earlier. Time Warner definitely needs some competition.

It’ll have to come down lots farther for me to make the leap! I pay $4.95 for dial-up and spend a good 60 hours a week online. I also purchase roughly 90% of my non-grocery items online. Clearly, I’m not negativley impacted by dial-up.

My first modem was 300 baud, run by a gerbil, a paperclip and piece of string. 56k is just fine by me!